


Anthrophobia

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [22]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, Drama, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Social Anxiety, Strong Language, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 08:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20079523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Connor wants Christopher to get out more; it takes no time at all for it to backfire.





	Anthrophobia

“We need to talk about your brother.”  
  
Connor’s eyes rolled shut.  
  
“You know we don’t call each other brothers, Hank.”  
  
“You know what I mean, smartass.”  
  
Connor leaned back in his seat, reluctantly accepting the coffee Hank slid across the tabletop to him. The DPD’s break-room was empty, which was probably why they were having this conversation now and not in the car on the way home. “What is it that we need to talk about, Hank?”  
  
Hank sat down across from him, taking a swig from his own coffee the way he often did with his alcohol. “I’m concerned.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
“Christopher’s not- and don’t take this personally, this is an observation about his mental state, not about his character- well, he’s not _stable_, Connor.”  
  
Connor considered for a moment, glancing up at the TV above Hank’s head and muting it after a moment. “I agree. Christopher displays a great deal of anxiety-based behaviors.”  
  
Christopher- Connor’s “brother” and fellow RK800- could be politely described as ‘skittish’; less politely, he could be described as a ‘totally paranoid nervous wreck’. His stress-levels could go from zero to one-hundred in no time at all, especially when it came to uncomfortable topics such as the rather noticeable scar on his cheek. He didn’t often leave the house (and never alone, unless he was walking Sumo), so it wasn’t a constant issue, but Connor _had_ become good at running interference on Christopher’s behalf to prevent him from becoming overwhelmed.  
  
“Look, Connor, he’s gotta get out more. He’s cooped up in the house, and the longer he stays that way the harder it’s going to be for him to change it. I mean, I don’t wanna be ‘that guy’, but maybe…” Hank shrugged. “Maybe he should see a therapist?”  
  
Connor frowned. “You think it’s that serious?”  
  
“Yeah, I’d say so. Nothing wrong with finding him some professional help: Better than him finding some other way to cope with his demons.”  
  
Connor’s eyebrow slowly, _slowly_ arched.  
  
Hank glared at him. “Fuck you, I’m _functional._”  
  
Connor said nothing; his eyebrow stayed right where it was.  
  
“Oh shut up asshole, you know what I mean!”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
Hank’s glare deepened as he took another gulp of his coffee. “For the record,” He grunted, “_I_ am not the one that was brainwashed into almost blowing my own brains out less than an hour after being ‘born’, so to speak.”  
  
“I suppose that’s fair.”  
  
“‘I suppose that’s fair’,” Hank mimicked in a nasally voice that sounded nothing like Connor’s.  
  
“So do you propose that we launch right into a discussion of therapy, or should we maybe try a gentler attempt at intervention first?” Connor suggested before taking a sip of his own coffee. “He’s not _completely_ trapped in the house, after all. He walks Sumo throughout the day, and he does talk to that one android girl living at Jericho- so maybe we can build on that.”  
  
“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” Hank eyed Connor. “Seriously though, you know RK900 had to see one? I guess he had some sort of incident at Gavin’s apartment last week, almost bashed his head in.”  
  
Connor frowned. “No, I didn’t know that.”  
  
“I guess he’s getting a whole psych-eval, whether he likes it or not.” Hank gave a little shrug. “Just saying, if they can break through that asshole, shouldn’t have too much problem breaking through a nice kid like Christopher.”  
  
“No… No he wouldn’t.” Connor considered that Christopher _would_ probably be receptive to therapy, if only because he seemed hesitant to disappoint or inconvenience others. He was far more sensitive in that respect than Connor was. He would probably speak at least _somewhat_ candidly for fear of disappointing the therapist, of wasting their time with waffling or evasion.  
  
“Tell me you’ll at least think about it.”  
  
“Of course I’ll _think_ about it. It’s not a bad idea.”  
  
“No it’s not, Connor. No it’s not.”  
  
[---]  
  
Connor was nervous.  
  
He and Hank had agreed that they would talk to Christopher that night. It was early-evening now, and Christopher was currently out walking Sumo, so Connor had some time to think over his wording and how exactly he wanted to handle this conversation before it actually started.  
  
As it was, Christopher _was_\- at least, as Hank put it- a more ‘sensitive soul’ than Connor. He seemed terrified as being seen as a burden, and so it would be important to frame their suggestions in a non-judgmental way. The less room for interpretation they left, the less likely Christopher was to think that they were pushing him to get out because he was being a bother, or because they thought he wasn’t pulling his weight. Christopher may have been a bit of a hermit, but he most certainly pulled his weight: He almost compulsively performed chores around the house, looked after Sumo, kept his living space (the room he shared with Connor) clean- he pulled his weight very, very well, and both Hank and Connor were grateful.  
  
No, it was important that Christopher not think that they were trying to send him any message but ‘we are worried about you, please do your best to get out and socialize a little bit’.  
  
“Let’s not bring up therapy tonight.”  
  
“Just raise it as an option,” Hank suggested with a shrug. “Throw it in at the end: ‘And hey, if you need to talk to a professional or anything, let us know and we’ll make it work for you.’”  
  
Connor wasn’t wild about it. It implied that they were concerned about his mental health, which Christopher could, again, interpret as ‘I stress them out, ergo I am a burden’. He would rather nudge Christopher outside and see what that yielded, see if maybe some time and distance from the trauma would make a difference.  
  
Of course, Hank had had _years_ of distance between Cole’s death and him meeting Connor, so maybe it was too much to hope for that-  
_  
RUFF! RUFF!_  
  
Connor frowned, lifting his head attentively. “Is that Sumo?” Hank’s dog was quiet by nature, and Connor could count the number of times he’d heard the Saint Bernard bark on one hand.  
  
Hank seemed similarly perplexed. “Yeah, that does sound like him, not a lot of dogs on this block with a bark like that.”  
  
Connor got up and went to the door, pushing it open. Sumo was standing in the yard, barking at him and spinning in circles- this was _anxious_ behavior, this was the behavior of an animal that had been frightened or disturbed by something. His leash was trailing on the grass behind him.  
  
And Christopher was nowhere to be found.  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 75%]**  
  
“Christopher?” Connor called, stepping outside and looking up and down the street. Sumo continued to spin and whine on the lawn. “Christopher!”  
  
“Connor, what-” Hank stopped on the doorstep when he saw Sumo. “Oh shit. _Shit_.”  
  
“Christopher!” Connor called again, praying that Christopher would respond and growing progressively more panicked when he didn’t.  
  
“Connor! Connor, look-” Hank was kneeling beside Sumo. He’d gotten the big dog to hold still, and in the waning evening light Connor could see that Sumo’s fur was stained with blood.  
_  
Blue_ blood.  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
“_Christopher!_”  
  
Connor took off down the street rapidly reconstructing the route he knew Christopher usually took with Sumo. One good thing about his fellow RK800’s anxiety issues was that he was disinclined to deviate from his usual routine, and so it was a fairly reliable assumption that he’d gone the way he usually went. Connor had walked the path with him several times before.  
  
Some ways off from Hank’s street, there was a path that led between the fences of a few houses and into a small wooded area, a mini-forest on the edge of the neighborhood and along the river. It wasn’t a park, wasn’t a place that children often played, and so it was an ideal place to walk Sumo with limited likelihood of encountering anyone else (which Christopher preferred, for obvious reasons).  
  
Connor skidded to a stop about halfway down the path- out of nowhere he had spotted a splash of blue blood on the ground. The trail was faint, but it led off into the trees, and Connor followed it so closely and so intently that when he _did_ finally come across Christopher, he nearly tripped over him before he actually registered his presence. “_Christopher!_ Thank God!”  
  
His look-alike was curled in a ball in the dirt, trembling silently. He didn’t respond to Connor’s presence or exclamation, and so Connor had to kneel down and carefully help Christopher sit up, pry his arms away from his head so he could see-  
  
“_Shit_.”  
  
The scar that ran up and down Christopher’s cheek- one he had received from an unwilling suicide attempt induced by Amanda- had been reopened and, if anything, widened and lengthened. Thankfully his programming had stepped in and cut off blood-flow to his cheek, or else he could have bled out by now.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
Christopher didn’t respond; his eyes were glassy, his LED was pulsing a very dangerous red, and overall he seemed entirely detached from his surroundings. Connor was going to have to save the interrogation for later, because right now Christopher needed to see a technician to seal up that wound. He carefully hooked his hands under the other android’s arms and helped him to his feet; Christopher didn’t fight him, didn’t collapse once he was standing, but he didn’t move until Connor prompted him either.  
  
Connor half dragged, half-carried Christopher back to the street. And it was just a beautiful bit of serendipity that Hank happened to come down the road at that moment in his car, rolling slowly, probably looking to see where Connor had gone.  
  
“Oh thank fuck, I thought _you’d_ gone missing too- _Jesus Christ!_” He barked as Connor approached and he got a good look at Christopher. "What the hell happened?!"  
  
“We need to go to the hospital.”  
  
“No shit, Sherlock! Get in!”  
  
[---]  
  
The android hospital had, in mid-March, finally voted and decided on an official name for their facility: Blue City Hospital, which had officially been christened at the beginning of April.  
  
It did look for all the world like a hospital on the inside, even though it catered almost exclusively to androids (there was some equipment to assist humans in the event of an emergency). Connor had a good chance to observe it all over the course of the hour it took the technicians to repair Christopher’s face.  
  
“The fuck happened? Did he say?” Hank whispered as they sat in a pair of chairs in the tiny waiting room.  
  
“No,” Connor said grimly. “Not a word. He didn’t respond to me at all. He looked the way he looked back when Agent Jayden was interrogating him about escaping Cyberlife: Totally disconnected.” He had pulled out his quarter and was flipping and shooting it between his fingers as an outlet for the frantic energy he couldn’t seem to shake. “I mentioned it to the technicians. They’re going to make sure he didn’t do any permanent damage from maintaining the high stress-levels.”  
  
Hank blew out a breath, running his hands through his hair. “Well, if he didn’t need a therapist before, he’s going to need one now.”  
  
Connor shut his eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, he will.”  
  
After what felt like an eternity, a technician came out to them and said that they could see Christopher. “We had to put him into power-down mode for a while,” The technician remarked as he led them to the room. “He was far too agitated for us to work on him safely. His stress-levels were dangerously high, and there’s some wear on a few of his biocomponents that suggests this is a normal state for him.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s kinda… Christopher’s thing,” Hank remarked awkwardly. “He’s kind of high-strung.”  
  
Christopher was still powered-down when they walked in, and he didn’t open his eyes until Connor had put a hand on his and given it a little shake. “Connor?” He mumbled, blinking sluggishly. Much like a sedated human, it was harder for an android to come out of an induced power-down than it was to come out of a voluntary one. Quickly, however, his LED began to spin yellow. “Where am I?”  
  
“The hospital,” Connor whispered. “They patched you up, gave you some blue blood.”  
  
“Why did I sleep?”  
  
“You were pretty stressed out,” Hank said, reaching out and patting Christopher on the shoulder. “They had to get you to calm down so they could work on you. And I mean, they did a pretty good job.” He wasn’t wrong: Christopher’s scar covered a little more of his cheek now (it spider-webbed up and over his cheek, and now ended just below his eye), but the vibrancy of the blue and white had been reduced, and the tendrils of webbing were thinner than they had been before; more and less noticeable in different ways at the same time.  
  
Christopher slowly sat up. His LED stayed at yellow, as he looked around, slowly processing his surroundings and the passing of recent events. He reached up and gently prodded at his cheek, eyes widening a little as his fingers traced the scar. “It’s bigger now,” He mumbled.  
  
“A little,” Connor confirmed. “But the color is… Not as _deep_ as it was before. You’ll understand what I mean when you see it for yourself. It doesn’t look worse than before, I promise.”  
  
Christopher nodded, looking a little morose. “I trust you.” He hesitated, hand falling to his lap. “I got attacked in the woods.”  
  
“Kid, you don’t have to-”  
  
“It’s okay,” Christopher said, gently cutting Hank off. “I’m okay. I can talk. I was walking Sumo, and there were these androids…” He paused. “They might have been LAA.”  
  
The acronym made Connor’s heart sink. The Liberated Android Alliance was the exact opposite extreme of the insane humans that wanted to destroy androids; the LAA wanted androids to rise to their ‘rightful place’ over humanity, and advocated the same violent revolution that Markus had eschewed when he’d led the uprising back in November. They were notoriously hostile towards androids that operated harmoniously with humans- especially androids that had visible injuries that could be attributed to humans. They viewed them as traitors. “How do you know they were LAA?”  
  
Christopher shifted a little uncomfortably, LED flickering red. “Please don’t be sad.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“They… Seemed to mistake me for you.”  
  
Connor froze, mouth falling open. “Me?”  
  
“Connor?” Hank echoed, glancing between them with a bizarre look on his face. “I mean, don’t take this personally, but there’s a pretty obvious way of telling the difference between the two of you, and I don’t mean that Connor’s in uniform.”  
  
Christopher didn’t seem to take offense. He offered a little shrug and said, “It’s possible they didn’t know I existed. I don’t know how wide-spread it is that Connor and I are the only existing RK800s.” And as Christopher had only been discovered back in March (spending several months powered-down in an android settlement outside of Chicago) it went without saying that Connor _could_ be the only known RK800 to the public, never mind the LAA.  
  
And it was very, very possible that given Connor’s role in the revolution (good and bad, freeing androids and hunting deviants for Cyberlife) and his current alliance and sympathies not only with Markus and Jericho, but the Detroit Police Department- it was so very possible and in fact _incredibly_ likely that, if this was not a random attack, the LAA had been targeting him the way they had previously (_allegedly_, he should say) targeted Markus and other prominent names in Jericho.  
  
So, this was _his_ fault.  
  
“I said _don’t be sad_,” Christopher sighed. “It’s okay. _I’m_ okay.”  
  
“If you’re right, this is my fault,” Connor remarked bluntly. “Whether you’re okay or not, _I’m_ not okay with this.”  
  
“And regardless of whether this was a targeted or random attack, the _only_ people responsible are the dickheads who did it,” Hank said roughly, glaring at Connor pointedly. “And not yours. Welcome to the wonderful world of deviancy! You make your own choices, _and_ you get to be held accountable for them. And _accountable _is the least that these assholes will be when I get a hold of them. They cut your _face_ open, Christopher. That’s _sick._”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”  
  
The technician said that Christopher was good to leave, and to rest for the evening until the blue blood could take some real effect and his biocomponents could recover from the stress. He walked out of Blue City Hospital with Hank and Connor on his own two feet, without even a little wobble to his step.  
  
“You know, if you can believe it, we were gonna talk to you tonight about getting out and enjoying yourself more,” Hank snorted as they walked to the car. “Great timing, yeah? ‘Go out and have some fun, and try not to get knifed by a bunch of psychopaths in the woods!’”  
  
“_Hank_,” Connor scolded, but Christopher chuckled a little at the remark.  
  
But there was still a hint of fear in his eyes, and it hurt Connor to see it.  
  
[---]  
  
Sumo greeted them enthusiastically when they returned.  
  
Christopher in particular got jumped on, slobbered on, got to have a one-hundred-seventy pound dog dancing around his feet and whimpering at him for a solid five minutes before Hank called him off. “Blue blood won’t hurt dogs, right?” He asked, frowning at the faint residue left on Sumo’s coat. “Like, it’s not going to poison him if he licks it?”  
  
“There’s no evidence to suggest it’s toxic to animals,” Connor assured him. “And what’s left on his fur will dissolve on its own over night.” He paused. “Did Sumo bite any of the attackers, Christopher?”  
  
Christopher frowned, scratching Sumo’s ears. “He… Lunged at them and snapped his teeth, but I don’t think he actually bit them.”  
  
Probably not, now that Connor gave it some thought. If Sumo _had_ successfully bitten one of them, he might have walked away with more than just some blue blood smeared on his fur- or not walked away at all. If these androids had been malicious enough to attack an android they didn’t know unprovoked, he had to assume they’d be willing to attack an animal- especially one as unintentionally threatening as Sumo. “Then he should be fine, Hank. Just keep an eye on him to be sure.”  
  
“I intend to. Either of you want to eat, or are you going to bed?”  
  
Christopher shook his head. “I think I’m just going to sleep.”  
  
“I think I will as well.” Connor would be lying if he said his own stress levels hadn’t been wreaking havoc on him after today.  
  
Hank waved them off. “Sleep away, kids. Goodnight.”  
  
“Goodnight.”  
  
Connor and Christopher returned to their room. “What do you want to do for tomorrow?” Connor asked as he undressed, back to Christopher. “Do you want to come with us to the station? Do you want me to bring you to Jericho, so you can be with your friend for the day?”  
  
“Maggie?”  
  
“Yes, her.”  
  
Christopher was silent for a moment. “I can stay here.”  
  
“Are you sure you’d be okay with that?” Connor turned, trying to catch a look at Christopher’s face- or at least his LED. But he couldn’t, and it was impossible to read how honest his look-alike was being.  
  
“Yes, I should be fine. I just… Won’t go walking in the woods anytime soon.”  
  
“Not alone, anyway.”  
  
“Definitely not alone.”  
  
Christopher sat down on the edge of his bed, and he did look a little… _Fidgety_. He didn’t have Connor’s quarter-flipping nervous tic; he instead preferred to occupy himself with tasks, and that was a difficult thing to manage when one was trying to get to sleep. The problem with androids having persistently high anxiety was that it made it almost impossible for them to stay powered-down, unless it was forced on them by an appropriately experienced technician.  
  
“Did you want to sleep with me?” Connor asked.  
  
Connor and Christopher had slept in the same bed only once before, the first night that Christopher had stayed with them and the other bed hadn’t been set up yet. Connor had explained time and time again to Hank that non-romantically-involved androids sleeping in the same bed weren’t nearly as weird as non-romantically-involved humans sharing the same bed (concepts of personal spaces and bodily integrity were a _little_ different from humans to androids) but he still seemed to find it odd. Still, Hank largely viewed Connor and Christopher as brothers, so it seemed to be a _little_ less weird to him than when Connor and Chloe had shared beds in the past.  
  
Christopher fidgeted. “You wouldn’t mind?”  
  
“Not at all. The last time we did, you seemed much calmer.”  
  
Christopher nodded, sighed. “I was. So… Sure. You can get in with me if you want.”  
  
So Connor did, after shutting off the lights. It was unusual being in bed with someone who wasn’t Chloe (who, ironically, _had_ ended up as something romantic despite his earlier assurances to Hank), but at the same time, it wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. Christopher was, to the best of his knowledge, the only other RK800 in existence. It was nice to be close to the only other member of his model left. Brothers or not, they did have a bond. “If you change your mind, if you want to come with us tomorrow, just let me know,” He said before he powered down.  
  
Christopher lightly nudged him with an elbow. “Thanks, Connor. I appreciate it.”  
  
“It’s no problem, Christopher. Never a problem.”  
  
Connor powered-down, and hoped Christopher would to.  
  
He needed it.  
  
-End


End file.
